Myth 1: Creativity is limited to special fields, like art or music so it is no use trying to be creative if you are an electrician or a journalist; in fact all fields have the inherent potential for creativity.
Myth 2: Creativity is limited to special people; in fact all people have a streak of creativity in them.
Myth 3: Creativity is what it is, you either have it or not and there is not much one can do about it; in fact you can develop and build upon your creativity.
Education experts have argued that the old model of sequential and standardised education can, in fact, “train students out of their creativity”. Learning by rote, memorising and reproducing preset information is not the essence of education. It can help in doing well in standardised tests, but not much more. Once you actually start to work, you may find that it is people who are resourceful, who innovate, can find ingenious ways of doing things that are much in demand.
Encouraging diversity
Standard education may try to suppress diversity and inspiration (including in fields like art or music seen as inherently creative) but it is very difficult to eliminate them. Cars or bottle caps can be manufactured. It is much harder to “manufacture” people. Nor should education attempt to do so. On the contrary, teachers should be equipped to build and encourage creativity as part of their professional training. And how is that to be done? Teachers and parents should further not just knowledge about the subject, but also nurture divergent thinking, many different angles and answers to a question. They should build confidence among students to speculate, to experiment, to think differently, however unorthodox it may seem. It does not mean that they should be ignorant in the subjects. Students need to be on top of a discipline and also speculate, innovate, explore many different angles, as an inherent part of learning the discipline. Young children can have enormous confidence in doing things that may seem different — going ahead without any fear of failure. Adults can quite easily undermine this confidence by discouraging them.
Here is an example of a little girl in class two and her art teacher.
Teacher: What are you doing?
Girl: Making a picture of God.
Teacher: But no one knows what God looks like!
Girl: They will, in five minutes…as soon as I am done.
Dont Treat Schools like Fast Food Joints:
(http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/05/31/robinson.education.fast.food/index.html?iref=allsearch)
Creativity:
(http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2009/03/creativity-and-education-contradictory.html)
Thus we need to counter at least three popular myths that surround creativity:
Myth 1: Creativity is limited to special fields, like art or music so it is no use trying to be creative if you are an electrician or a journalist; in fact all fields have the inherent potential for creativity.
Myth 2: Creativity is limited to special people; in fact all people have a streak of creativity in them.
Myth 3: Creativity is what it is, you either have it or not and there is not much one can do about it; in fact you can develop and build upon your creativity.
Education experts have argued that the old model of sequential and standardised education can, in fact, “train students out of their creativity”. Learning by rote, memorising and reproducing preset information is not the essence of education. It can help in doing well in standardised tests, but not much more. Once you actually start to work, you may find that it is people who are resourceful, who innovate, can find ingenious ways of doing things that are much in demand.
Encouraging diversity
Standard education may try to suppress diversity and inspiration (including in fields like art or music seen as inherently creative) but it is very difficult to eliminate them. Cars or bottle caps can be manufactured. It is much harder to “manufacture” people. Nor should education attempt to do so. On the contrary, teachers should be equipped to build and encourage creativity as part of their professional training. And how is that to be done? Teachers and parents should further not just knowledge about the subject, but also nurture divergent thinking, many different angles and answers to a question. They should build confidence among students to speculate, to experiment, to think differently, however unorthodox it may seem. It does not mean that they should be ignorant in the subjects. Students need to be on top of a discipline and also speculate, innovate, explore many different angles, as an inherent part of learning the discipline. Young children can have enormous confidence in doing things that may seem different — going ahead without any fear of failure. Adults can quite easily undermine this confidence by discouraging them.
Here is an example of a little girl in class two and her art teacher.
Teacher: What are you doing?
Girl: Making a picture of God.
Teacher: But no one knows what God looks like!
Girl: They will, in five minutes…as soon as I am done.